Formerly the freelance headquarters for Travis Fain, now a reporter for the (Greensboro) News & Record.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

N.C. Lucid: Don East doesn't need physical notes

Whether you're in North Carolina, Georgia or any where else, I imagine, you don't have to spend much time around politicians to realize anew that you just can't leave them unsupervised.

Today in a N.C. Senate committee meeting, state Sen. Don East, R-Pilot Mountain, was pushing SB 1386. Basically this would allow an employee of any North Carolina city or county to take a job with the state and hold onto their accrued vacation and sick time.

"I can't imagine that there's any cost or much cost" to the state in this change, Sen. East told the committee.

Not five minutes later, Carl Dean, legislative liaison for the N.C. Office of State Personnel, asked the committee to shelve the bill so it could be studied.

"There would be a cost to this bill," Mr. Dean said.

Dean added that a "physical note" should be done on the bill, though presumably he meant one of these.

The bill was withdrawn. After the meeting, Sen. East acknowledged that "there's going to be some initial cost" for the state. But he said it would even out, since the policy would work both ways, forcing counties and cities that hire former state employees to let them keep their accrued time, as well.

Sen. East also said he's pursuing this change because he wants the various governments in North Carolina to have a uniform policy. It's not, he said, to appease any particular people who'd like to take a new job and take their accrued time with them.